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“That women were left out of the nation’s founding documents, and out of its founders’ idea of civil society, considered, like slaves, to be confined to a state of nature, would trouble the political order for centuries.” [Pictured: Abigail Adams]
![“That women were left out of the nation’s founding documents, and out of its founders’ idea of civil society, considered, like slaves, to be confined to a state of nature, would trouble the political order for centuries.” [Pictured: Abigail Adams]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQLXO_-WAAA37aK.jpg "“That women were left out of the nation’s founding documents, and out of its founders’ idea of civil society, considered, like slaves, to be confined to a state of nature, would trouble the political order for centuries.” [Pictured: Abigail Adams]")
“The Declaration that Congress did adopt was [...] an act of extraordinary political courage [but also] a colossal failure of political will, in holding back the tide of opposition to slavery by ignoring it, for the sake of a union that, in the end, could not and would not last.”
![“The Declaration that Congress did adopt was [...] an act of extraordinary political courage [but also] a colossal failure of political will, in holding back the tide of opposition to slavery by ignoring it, for the sake of a union that, in the end, could not and would not last.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQNb73pWsAAWFec.jpg "“The Declaration that Congress did adopt was [...] an act of extraordinary political courage [but also] a colossal failure of political will, in holding back the tide of opposition to slavery by ignoring it, for the sake of a union that, in the end, could not and would not last.”")
“Washington, almost as striking at [55] as he’d been as a young man, was unanimously elected president. (His beauty was marred only by his terrible teeth, which had rotted and been replaced by dentures made from ivory and from nine teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.)”
![“Washington, almost as striking at [55] as he’d been as a young man, was unanimously elected president. (His beauty was marred only by his terrible teeth, which had rotted and been replaced by dentures made from ivory and from nine teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.)”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQRbLuuXUAAyuN_.jpg "“Washington, almost as striking at [55] as he’d been as a young man, was unanimously elected president. (His beauty was marred only by his terrible teeth, which had rotted and been replaced by dentures made from ivory and from nine teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.)”")
“Slavery became the crucial divide in Philadelphia because slaves factored in two calculations: in the wealth they represented as property and in the population they represented as people. The two could not be separated.”
“The newspaper would hold the Republic together; the telegraph would hold the Republic together; the radio would hold the Republic together; the Internet would hold the Republic together. Each time, this assertion would be both right and terribly wrong.”
“A stable party system organizes dissent. It turns discontent into a public good. And it insures the peaceful transfer of power, in which the losing party willingly, and without hesitation, surrenders its power to the winning party.”
“Between the first federal census and the second, the population of the United States increased from 3.9 to 5.3 million; by 1810, it was 7.2 million, having grown at the extraordinary rate of 35 percent every decade.”
“(During his second term, an embittered Jefferson would suggest that newspapers ought to be divided into four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies.)”
“In 1831, twenty thousand Europeans migrated to the [US]; in 1854 [...] more than four hundred thousand. While two and a half million Europeans had migrated to all of the Americas between 1500 and 1800, the same number [...] arrived specifically in the [US] between 1845 and 1854”
![“In 1831, twenty thousand Europeans migrated to the [US]; in 1854 [...] more than four hundred thousand. While two and a half million Europeans had migrated to all of the Americas between 1500 and 1800, the same number [...] arrived specifically in the [US] between 1845 and 1854”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERyRflbXkAEDRgM.jpg "“In 1831, twenty thousand Europeans migrated to the [US]; in 1854 [...] more than four hundred thousand. While two and a half million Europeans had migrated to all of the Americas between 1500 and 1800, the same number [...] arrived specifically in the [US] between 1845 and 1854”")
“Beginning with the Whig Party, long before women could vote, they brought into the parties a political style they’d perfected first as abolitionists and then as prohibitionists: the moral crusade, pious and uncompromising. No election has been the same since.”
“‘If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave,’ Grimes wrote, ‘I would[...] leave my skin a legacy to the government, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment and then bind the Constitution of glorious happy and free America.’”
![“‘If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave,’ Grimes wrote, ‘I would[...] leave my skin a legacy to the government, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment and then bind the Constitution of glorious happy and free America.’”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ER985ZCW4AIUygy.jpg "“‘If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave,’ Grimes wrote, ‘I would[...] leave my skin a legacy to the government, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment and then bind the Constitution of glorious happy and free America.’”")
“‘both houses are handsomely carpeted,’ [Dickens] allowed [...] But meetings of the House of Representatives, he said, were ‘the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.’”
![“‘both houses are handsomely carpeted,’ [Dickens] allowed [...] But meetings of the House of Representatives, he said, were ‘the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.’”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ER99Ys8WAAMB7Ro.jpg "“‘both houses are handsomely carpeted,’ [Dickens] allowed [...] But meetings of the House of Representatives, he said, were ‘the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.’”")
“the scale of the territory the United States acquired by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was staggering. The Louisiana Purchase had doubled the size of the United States. In gaining territory from Mexico, the United States grew by 64 percent.”
“Both by law and by brute force, southern legislators, state by state, and poll workers, precinct by precinct, denied black men the right to vote. In Louisiana, black voter registration dropped from 130,000 in 1898 to 5,300 in 1908, and to 730 in 1910.”
“Between 1941 and 1946, the federal government spent more than it had from 1789 to 1941.”
“Art is the creation of individuals in communities, [Dwight] Macdonald argued; middlebrow culture is a product manufactured and packaged for the masses. ‘Masscult is bad in a new way,’ Macdonald wrote. ‘It doesn’t even have the theoretical possibility of being good.’”
![“Art is the creation of individuals in communities, [Dwight] Macdonald argued; middlebrow culture is a product manufactured and packaged for the masses. ‘Masscult is bad in a new way,’ Macdonald wrote. ‘It doesn’t even have the theoretical possibility of being good.’”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUQMmMuXQAUSiYJ.jpg "“Art is the creation of individuals in communities, [Dwight] Macdonald argued; middlebrow culture is a product manufactured and packaged for the masses. ‘Masscult is bad in a new way,’ Macdonald wrote. ‘It doesn’t even have the theoretical possibility of being good.’”")
“More Americans would be sent to prison in the twenty years after LBJ launched his war on crime than went to prison in the entire century before.”
“That the framers of the Constitution had not resolved the question of slavery had led to a civil war. That they regarded women as unequal to men nearly did the same.”
“Although no right to privacy is mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Douglas maintained that it is nevertheless there [...] in the shadow cast by words, in ‘penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’”
![“Although no right to privacy is mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Douglas maintained that it is nevertheless there [...] in the shadow cast by words, in ‘penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUpA3DWWAAAnmU1.jpg "“Although no right to privacy is mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Douglas maintained that it is nevertheless there [...] in the shadow cast by words, in ‘penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’”")
![“Although no right to privacy is mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Douglas maintained that it is nevertheless there [...] in the shadow cast by words, in ‘penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUpv0tsXsAA8Bla.jpg "“Although no right to privacy is mentioned in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, Douglas maintained that it is nevertheless there [...] in the shadow cast by words, in ‘penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’”")
p780:
“A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders. And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history.” — Jill Lepore
A couple hundred pages would go by and I’d forget to tweet, but here’s hoping anyone reading this thread is inspired to read this marvellous survey of US history. Thanks to @james_baggaley for the recommendation! Once again, it’s:
